Legal advice?

I have a question about how “adverse possession” laws and rules about utility company access easements interact. Our house has one property line directly under a utility line. We’d like to build a fence there. According to Seattle City Light, we need to leave two and a half feet on our side of the line, and our neighbor has to leave two and a half feet on her side of the line, for a five foot access easement. However, our neighbor’s fence is directly on the line. (That’s her problem, if the utility companies ever need to work on that line.)

Now, as I read the relevant section of the RCW, we’re fine if we put up a fence at the 2.5 foot distance, as long as we don’t let our neighbor move her fence back to touch ours, or plant her own garden in that space or something. However, due to our neighbor’s fence being right on the line, Cam is worried that if we put our fence at the proper distance for the utility easement, we’re effectively ceding our interest in that 2.5 foot wide strip.

Can anybody recommend a lawyer who can tell us for sure what we can and cannot do with a fence there, and what we do and do not have to worry about? Could we put up an easily-removed bamboo fence right on the property line, and take it down whenever the utility company needs access to that space? Could we put up a permanent fence at the two and a half foot line, and string a chain at the property line with a “no trespassing” sign?

I’d rather not spend the money on a lawyer, but I’d like even less having to hire a surveyor and another lawyer at some point down the line if this becomes a problem.

Somewhere at home I have lying around a photocopy of an article on Washington’s adverse possession laws. I’ll see if it says anything interesting.

My off-the-cuff thought is just that the important thing is not necessarily to have a barrier at the property line, but to have the property line clearly marked so that both parties understand where it is. So maybe you could just put up some tiny 2-inch-high signs saying “property line here!”. Or maybe the power line/easement itself is an effective marker.

Well, the permanent fence idea was just for the border with that one neighbor. I was under the impression that your meditation garden was going to be farther west, where a portable bamboo fence might be more appropriate anyway.

Ooooh, not a fence, a *moat*! Clear barrier, solves the problem of whose fence is whose without giving up any land, and is infinitely more practical than my original “trench with fire” idea. You could even pass it off as a duck pond or fish pool or some such.

Well, the problem is you can’t have a barrier at the property line, because of the easement, right? So you’d have a barrier as close as possible, with a non-barrier marker at the line to keep the line from shifting without annoying City Light.

That depends — what’s the penalty for having a barrier at the property line? If the penalty is just that we have to lose or disassemble the fence once every N years when City Light comes to work on the pole, that’s a penalty I’m willing to take. (And, so, apparently, are almost all our neighbors.)

With or without a barrier, anything that proves you use or at least maintain your interest in the land in question (such as upkeep on your meditation garden) should help matters. For an opinion from a real attorney who has done quite a bit of adverse possession work in the area over the years, you can contact my husband, Mike Nesteroff, of Lawyerpalooza “fame”. Good luck!